Welcome to our emergency planning page. You’ll find information on how Portsmouth City Council’s plans help reduce the effect of any emergencies both in the city and county-wide, so that people can go about their lives as freely and with as much confidence as possible.
To find out more about civil contingencies in Portsmouth, you can:
Portsmouth plans for different emergencies, including flooding and sever weather, people displaced due to explosions or fires, major transport incidents, pollution or major industrial accidents. The Civil Contingency team identifies potential hazards, and prepares for the consequences by working with the emergency services, neighbouring local authorities, health organisations, government agencies and the utility companies.
Together they maintain plans, train and simulate real-life events to ensure a coordinated and effective response to any emergency. These plans are reviewed regularly.
Download a copy of the council’s emergency response plan
The council’s Civil Contingencies team would be responsible for providing warnings and public information, helping restore infrastructure and services, and offering support to affected people, such as running a control centre, removing debris and opening 48-hour rest centres for evacuees, as well as finding longer term accommodation if required.
For more information on the risks in your area, and what you can do to help yourself, your family and your community should an emergency happen, download the Portsmouth Household Emergency Action Plan from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Resilience Forum website. You can also view our Evacuation page.
The best way to protect your pet is to think ahead and keep useful information and supplies together, as suggested in the council’s emergency response plan, starting on page 48. It includes a pets checklist and information cards you can print and complete.
One of the emergency situations that Portsmouth City Council has to plan for is an accident involving a nuclear-powered submarine at Portsmouth’s naval base. This is extremely unlikely to happen, but the council is still required to have a plan in place. The Office for Nuclear Regulations test the current arrangements every 3 years. The Reactor Emergency Plan covers three areas of roughly 1.5 km in radius, including parts of both Portsmouth and Gosport; this can be viewed on the Portsmouth Emergency Planning map.
The council has produced useful leaflets for residents and people working in the areas of the city that could be affected. The leaflets explain what to expect, what we do and what precautions to take if an incident happens. Read the leaflet for residents living in the 1.5km zone, the leaflet for residents living in the wider 5km zone, or the leaflet for businesses in the 1.5km zone.
The Community Risk Register (CRR) looks at the likelihood and impact of a range of risks to the whole of Hampshire & the Isle of Wight (IoW). The main categories considered are: natural events, human and animal diseases, major accidents and malicious attacks, rather than threats like terrorist incidents.
The CRR assesses only those risks most likely to happen, and the impact they would have across the county. Even within the county, a risk such as coastal flooding can have a very different impact.
If a risk is included in the Community Risk Register, it doesn’t mean it will happen. It means it is known to be a possibility, and organisations have made arrangements to reduce its impact. The register is updated annually.
The CRR was produced by Hampshire & IoW Local Resilience Forum with help from experts and the government’s National Risk Register, which analyses risks to the UK as a whole.
